Recap of Wearables DevCon 2014

Fitness trackers, Google Glasses, Smartwatches, oh my! Over 1200 developers, engineers and designers attended the inaugural Wearables DevCon to network and learn the latest tips and trends on developing wearable technology. Many attendees were sporting pebble watches and Google Glasses while chatting in the hallways while others listened to the numerous sessions that were held over the two-day conference.

One of the sessions was led by our own John Montgomery. He spoke about the importance of testing your wearable apps in-the-wild, and not just in your lab. He expressed the importance of creating wearables that your audience wants in order to delight users. He also talked about the significance of 360 degree quality of your wearable app.

uTest was a gold sponsor and had a booth at the event. We met many interesting people that told us about their own wearable tech project that included clothing and headgear. Pretty cool, right?

The event was such an overwhelming success that it is moving to a much larger location next year. Wearable technology is definitely taking off and not slowing down anytime soon. A recent article from Mashable states that Google is now making it easier for developers to build wearables off an Android platform via their own SDK.

Google’s senior vice president of Android and Chrome, Sundar Pichai announced earlier this week,

“When we think of wearables, we think of it as a platform. We see a world of sensors. Sensors can be small and powerful, and gather a lot of information that can be useful for users. We want to build the right APIs for this world of sensors. In about two weeks, you will see us launch the first SDK for what we think of as Android for wearables”.

There is sure to be much more to come in the wearables field and we can’t wait to see what we will see at next year’s Wearables DevCon. See you there!